Jail for neo-Nazi bombers

Three men are given three-year sentences for petrol-bomb attack on immigrants in eastern Germany

Halle, Germany -- Three German neo-Nazis were jailed for several years in Germany this week for throwing petrol bombs into a house where three immigrant men were sleeping.

A woman, 22, on trial with them wept as she begged the three victims for forgiveness. She said she was ashamed that she had been friends with the neo-Nazis. Judges suspended her sentence in view of the time she had already spent in pre-trial custody.

The migrants, who had been housed in the town of Sangerhausen while they waited for political-asylum applications to be processed, were not physically hurt but psychologically scarred, lawyers for the victims said.

One woke when the building was set alight, roused the other two, and they ran outside to safety.

The three accused, aged 22 to 28, received prison terms of 64, 57 and 45 months for attempted murder and serious arson.

The January 6, 2007 attack, in which several bombs were thrown into a ground-floor apartment of the building in Saxony-Anhalt state, was an act of xenophobic revenge, the court ruled. The trial took a year to conduct.